The Star of the East
There was a pub in Shoreditch…Archive for Beer philosophy
Fat Tuesday
Yes we’re all fed up. The extreme excitement of snow and ice [and days off] has passed, leaving us with grey skies and soggy feet. Even the people with jobs are up against the wall as their employers squeeze every last drop of work out of them rather than hire in any new talent. The big networks are waiting for financial new year’s day but are they sure it will ever dawn?
Of course there’s nothing new. When we lived in a subsistance agricultural society we’d have gobbled all our food at Christmas, or whatever pagan festival it was called, before it went bad and we’d be fighting over mouldy root vegetables.
It’s no accident that the Catholic church thought that this might be a good time to promote a bit of God fearing self denial. Why not take your pain and dedicate it to world peace or something? Give up Facebook for Lent, go on try it. The word Lent comes from the German root of long. The days get longer, or do they just seem longer without tangfastics and tizer?
Meanwhile Governments are vainly trying to feed the floundering beasts of the Banking and Automotive industries in the hope that seeing fatted cows walk through the streets will cheer us up and convince us to spend our way out of recession.
Why don’t we just invent a new religion, throw a party, kill the fatted cows and serve them in a crepe smothered with cream.
Happy Pancake day.
ps. as soon as I get over the Gastric Flu I’ll be back on the beer and pies and feeling begninly philosopical about life, work and online advertising.
How to hire creative thinkers and grow your empire
1. pick someone just like yourself
2. pick some completely different to yourself
1. is good, I like myself, so I’m going to like them, aren’t I? I’m pretty good at my job, so they’ll be great too. We’ll share values, we’ll both like the same kind of music, we’ll understand each other. We’ll agree with each other [they'll agree with me].
But won’t that be a bit boring? What if I get bored of all my music, where I get new tunes? What if their crazy shirt collection gets crazier than mine? What if I have a problem I can’t crack. My clone’s not going to have much more luck. What if there’s something I’m not very good at [god forbid] or I don’t like doing? So you go for someone who compliments you. No. they don’t say nice stuff, they form a yin to your yang or whatever. They tell you where you’re going wrong. You don’t have to listen.
In reality it’s mixture of both. I look for people with craft skills, attention to detail, graft skills, evidence of hard work [that's supposed to be me]. But I also look for something completely unexpected; a failed novelist, a Nick Cave fan [head of strategy at Chemistry], a Russian Weapons expert [Wunderman], Mr T’s nephew [TMW], a polite South African girl with a ninja alter ego [Lateral]. Yes, after a few years they will be offered huge amounts of money to go elsewhere, but hey, you can always make some more. And they take what they’ve learnt out there with them.
They are your industry PR.
Digital Dreams pt 2 (Reality)
But in the meantime we had the pay the rent. We designed and programmed touch screen interfaces for digital information kiosk prototypes.
We discovered Information architecture [5 people, 5 black markers, one very big bit of paper, lots of arrows]. We discovered clients [never knew what they wanted, didn't understand what we were talking about]. We discovered breakdowns in communication.
We discovered the internet. Or at least we had Demon accounts, a 14.4 modem that looked like a Stylophone,
and a lot a patience.
The lunatics take over the asylum
The big questions facing digital agencies now is “when you inherit the kingdom will you drop the ball”.
Yes, we will the finally get the chance to call the shots, own the marketing budgets, and deliver the kind of brand and tactical campaigns that we’ve been planning for 10 years.
The old millennium is dead. When internet connections were mind numbingly slow, software buggy, and TV advertising still eating all the cake.
We’ve been making big plans all right, but will what we make be more interesting just because we have larger production budgets?
Will our ideas be big enough to fill the void left by the implosion of the ad-funded-TV-content model?
The public still love great TV ads. It doesn’t make them buy stuff necessarily but it creates a warm feeling inside.
So, when the lunatics take over the asylum…
Will they turn into the same self indulgent and extravagant self promoters whose thunder they have stolen?
Or will they use their natural ingenuity to create campaigns that capture the imagination and the confidence of the buying public and make brand owners happy?
While I finish my wine…
I survey the dead duck of Gascon and the foie gras of experience washes over me. A young designer who wants it all, the cheeky fucker and why not.
Truth, dare, promise
The opinion of any malicious fool who can open a WordPress account [I just did it in 3 minutes on my phone] could be worth millions of pounds of your hard earned marketing budget. You can’t lie about the natural goodness of your biscuits, or the reliability of your computers, or the career opportunities in your company. Some subjects and audiences are out of bounds completely. But I can have a frank and open discussion just about anything, legal or not; about the best brand of fags to smoke behind the bike-shed after a snog with your underage girlfriend, and what flavour alcopop will best help her forget all about it.
Village Idiot II
Confession time: I’m a village idiot too. That’s why I’m writing this on the 6.45 Kings Cross to Kings Lynn, it’s laborious, but given how slow BT broadband is in Norfolk is, it’s not as daft as it sounds.
Village people
There’s nothing new about social networking. The new and unusual development was the fracturing of social networks in the first place, the loss of community. This didn’t happen on an inner city sink estate during the Thatcher years, where communities have survived surprisingly well. I think it started in the groovy, baby boomer 50’s and 60’s when the middle classes rejected their cultural, geographical and religious roots and turned to worship the new God of International Corporate culture. They moved to new neighbourhoods specifically designed to accommodate them and their upwardly mobile friends, where they could host discreet dinner parties and play golf with ‘the right sort of people’. But they lost their original ‘friends and family’ on the way. And if they moved on up, then they made more new friends again [and discarded the last lot]. And I think they were pretty happy with the way it worked. Who wants embarrassing ghosts of their their less prosperous past hanging around?
So if you want your community back, what do you do?
You buy a farmhouse in a charming village in Oxfordshire and join the local Darts team.
And if you can’t afford a farmhouse in a charming village in Oxfordshire?
There’s always facebook.
It’s raining again
It’s raining again and I feel like a hero. My dog is on her last legs, my shoes are damp and squeaky, but my keyboard is clean. it’s like having a new computer. And talking about dirty macs, have you heard about the new porn? Everybody’s guilty secret is out and the joy of web 2.0 has made it happen. Yes, I confess, I wasn’t licking cocaine from the bare flesh of nubile virgins last night. No, I was playing Scrabulous with two strangers at once.
